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Richard E Nunes and GlobalArt have become one of the great quality X-Plane scenery developers over the last few years. Early projects focused on Brazil with the four quality sceneries of: SBDN - Presidente Prudente, SBGL - Galeo International Airport (Rio), SBRJ - Rio-Santos Dumont and SBSV - Salvador/Bahia of which Bahia is a personal favorite. Then came a change of country to Canada and the huge CYYZ - Toronto Pearson International scenery earlier this year.

GlobalArt's sceneries are hugely detailed and complex, if some of the most detailed sceneries available in X-Plane in this larger size of airport design. So most of GlobalArt's sceneries do require a significant heft in computer power to get the most return from these quality sceneries.

CYYZ - Toronto Pearson was a significantly a heavy framerate scenery, although it has had a few revisions, it is still a hard run on your processors.

Like the earlier Brazilian sceneries they come maybe a bit too early for the processing power required, and currently all of my GlobalArt Brazilian airports now run within my acceptable conditions with better graphic cards and a much more efficient X-Plane11 simulator unlike the heavy processor pressure in the early days. However CYYZ - Toronto is still a very marginal scenery to use for my specifications and of course the question is what does this new CYUL - Montreal give me in the same realistic performance and usage... and that is the basic basis of this preview.

There are various options available with installing this CYUL - Montreal scenery. These three extras are provided and you can use with the scenery; "Winter Textures" (very nice), w2xp autogen (called autogem?) and the full Montreal Ortophoto HD Zoom 17. The winter textures are included in the package, but the w2xp autogen and HD Zoom 17 are separately downloaded. Installing the above items depends of your scale of computer power, storage space and built in RAM. The HD Zoom 17 orthophoto installed is a large size volume at 7.94GB (six item download) but well worth it. The Preview reviewed here is with both the w2xp autogen and HD Zoom 17 orthophoto installed.

I am not a big fan of OSM created autogen. Mostly because the building quality is very average, certainly compared with the X-Plane default autogen. It looks here far whiter and more bland than the exquisite X-Plane default autogen system... If you decide to use the custom provided w2xp autogen then you have to also accept that you will have to install the ortho scenery in there as well, because without the underlay it all looks quite awful (top)....

.... install the underlay ortho and it does an exceptional job in making it realistic, so you can see why it is required, but I really don't like those average buildings and plain textures.

CYUL - Montreal

Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International AirportFrench: Aéroport international Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau de Montréal

IATA: YUL - ICAO: CYUL - WMO 71627

06L/24R 11,000ft (3,353m) Asphalt/Concrete

06R/24L 9,600ft (2,926m) Concrete

10/28 7,000ft (2,134m) Asphalt

Elevation AMSL 118ft / 36m

CYUL can be split into two distinct zones. The southwest Terminal area and the central maintenance and Bombardier Inc. plant corridor set out between the two parallel runways.

Terminals

The main terminal area consists of one large terminal with a major western extension, and an island terminal set north of the main original terminal building. The original terminal building is now buried beneath the later extensions, but it is still there in a similar arrangement like there is at EGCC-Manchester. The original control tower still sits above the building, but the new taller one is merely a few meters away.

This extensive terminal expansion was done between 2011–2016 with phase ll now commenced. Gate 55 can accommodate an A380, and Air France ran a A380 service to Paris before it was dropped after 16 months in 2012 because of poor demand, however in the phase ll plans there are requirements for two more additional A380 gates.

One of the big features in this scenery is right next to the A380 (Gate55). It is the animated "Passenger Transfer Vehicle" that take passengers out to the many remote stands. The animated version connects to a static Delta B777 and is excellent to watch, but be very aware of them moving around the aprons when arriving and departing the main ramps.

The standout Marriott hotel that was completed in 2009 comprises with also the airport's railway station which is located in the basement with connections to downtown Montreal.

The detailing and quality factor is never in doubt with GlobalArt sceneries, as they are significantly the most detailed per airport size in X-Plane.

The control tower is excellent in detail, and tower view is set, but from the lower inside perspective than the better just above view point that does not give you the window surrounds as that you have intruding here, which is shame as the view (even if slightly obstructed) is very good of all approaches.

Landside detail was always a forte for this developer and at CYUL it is also very good, with great signage and depth in detail.

Gate detail is also excellent, with a multitude of gates and loads of different arm configurations, and they all work and are animated.

Ramp clutter is also excellent, you are missing nothing here in detail. There are full vehicle ramp animations, but as not that many as that you would really expect there to be here compared to the other GlobalArt airports, carpark (car) clutter is also a bit on the light side?

Aeroquay

The island terminal is called the "Aeroquay" and covers gates 21A, 21B 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34. Unusual for these sort of island terminals the Aeroquay has two airbridges (active). There is a ramp notice for this area between the Aeroquay and the main terminal as "Aircraft of wingspan of 118' (36m) or more are prohibited in this area", and there are several more restricted wingspan areas around the airport.

Terminal ramp lighting is excellent, and CYUL looks great from a distance as well...

Terminal and hotel window lighting is however a little one dimensional, it is passable but the lighting design depth could have been better.

Remote Stands and De-Icing Zone

Between the two major areas there is a layout of a remote parking apron (N) and stands N1 to 7B and a De-Icing zone...

... rear of the De-Ice apron is the airport's management centre called "Aero MAG" and a very nice Fire Station.

The De-Ice Apron is a major feature of the scenery, but to note it is not perfected yet. There are two available De-Icing bays in "Bay 5" and "Bay 8". Bay 5 can accommodate currently a B737/300/400, but Bay 8 can be used with B738/6/7/8, A320/319 and an E-190/195... missing is the CRJ-200?

When you shut down the engines the De-Ice trucks will surround the aircraft. To activate the spraying, you then call radio frequency "129.625" for Bay 5 and freq "131.375" for Bay 8 and voila!... it takes about 3 to 5 min to spray the aircraft depending on the size.

... as noted it is still being worked on, for one it would be nice to keep the engines turning, and the spray is currently smoke? and the wrong colour? but GlobalArt has said the new 11.30 particle system may iron out the issues... the view from the cabin during the animated de-Icing is sensational.

Central areas

Between runways 06L/24R and 06R/24L (cross runway 10/28 is now closed) there is a large aviation based infrastructure layout that includes major maintenance bases for Air Canada, Transat and Air Inuit and mostly they are all set out to the southwest and northeast. This airport is also the headquarters of Air Canada.

The Air Canada workshops are very impressive, note the animated rear radar tower. The signage is excellent and authentic. Kelly Aviation is also represented behind the Air Canada facilities. Transat and Air Inuit both have maintenance hangars and are also very well done, Innotech Aviation is also represented with smoking chimneys, great with particle effects from 11.30, but poor for the environment.

The rest of the central area is dominated by Bombardier Inc and its headquarters of offices and factories... here they build the Global Express and Challenger 300 private jets, the C-Series (nee Airbus A220) and snowmobiles! (the Dash 8 Q400 is built in Toronto). Originally this was the factories and headquarters of the government owned Canadair.

Night lighting in the central area is excellent... all apron areas are well lit and the comprehensively lit logo signage is excellent.

There is a great 3d effect that covers the "Autoroute Chromeday Quest" (Route 13) that is on the northeast boundary of the airport, it is cut down below the X-Plane ground level mesh, and includes the tunnel, the cut-out is highly viewable from both the 24L and 24R approaches. A note in that if you use the extra full orthophoto images, you have to change the object files (supplied) to have this effect with the larger ortho images.

General Aviation and Private Jet area

On the threshold of runway 24L is a General Aviation and Private Jet set of ramps with the associated operator businesses.

There are a lot of operators and their custom buildings are all represented here... including Signature, Starlink, PropAir, Air Creebec, Aviation+Etcetera, skyservice with an excellent reception centre.... note that all the multitude of flags set around the scenery (and there is a lot of them) are all beautifully and realistically animated.

Runway and taxiway textures

All runway and taxiway textures are excellent, with a great variety of surfaces and detail. All the main surface are reflective, which is great in the rain, but also highly reflective in the daytime as well, as the early above images show the runways and taxiway standing well out of the background on a way out and in the distance on the approach, in all conditions?

Markings and signage and airport navigation are all excellent, and finally there is no grass, and it is highly noticeable by it's absence as the verge, infields all look and are very flat.

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Preview Notes:

Overall I really like this high quality airport of CYUL - Montreal from GlobalArt, it is a sensational scenery, and for myself another great port to use on my F1 Formula 1 racing flyway for the Canadian race of the yearly calendar. Building, terminal and general infrastructure is beautifully designed and nicely detailed, as GlobalArt are alway one of the best developers for detail and a high clutter count. All animations and activity is excellent, with animated vehicles, airbridges with VGDS, Custom Approach Lights (ALS) systems. There is great textures and ground surfaces, if a little too reflective in most lighting conditions. There are also a lot of extras including extra custom (if only w2xp OSM), winter textures (Big thank you) and full Montreal orthophoto textures if you are willing to download the full nearly 8gb of files.

Clever if not totally perfected De-Icing system is a great idea.... so what then of the big question? with everything and including those extensive ortho textures in that can I actually use this scenery? Well I can... but by the time I add everything in and have WorldTraffic3 running it is still close and lineball with say only 10 fr between me and the 18 fr slideshow, but I found it all actually quite usable with the texture quality set only to high as it used up around 4078gb of my graphic card use. So I can happily use this quality CYUL, so overall I am very happy with that working margin... highly recommended.

Precise modeling based on original references, photos and other research.

Customized runways, lines and taxiways, with ambient occlusion included in the textures.

Sun reflections effects on pavements.

Fingers Auto Gate with VGDS.

AutoGate Plugin by Marginal

Static objects, vehicles and aircraft are present in this scenery.

Avenues and streets with personalized and standard vehicle traffic.

Custom Airport Mesh and adjacent areas.

Underground passages created with Mesh Remexe tool

Mesh Remexe Tool – by Joz

HDR lighting with custom night textures.

Custom textures with ambient occlusion.

Custom Approach Lights (ALS) systems.

Included taxi routes for aircraft, "taxi route"

Configured to WT3 plugin.

Configured Ramp Start.

De-ice system configured for some specific aircraft

Use Auto Gate Datarefs

Winter texture - only around the Airport area.

Animated Airport

Configured for World Traffic 3

Animated ground traffic and default aircraft traffic.

Ground Traffic plugin by Marginal

WT3: WorldTraffic GroundRoutes are not provided but ysfsim has provided adjusted quality WT3 ground route files for use at the CYUL Overall the airport functions absolutely perfectly fine in giving you that full running canadian airport and with full traffic activity. And the aircraft will also loop to the correct stand parking position.

Positives: Mostly everything, lighting is excellent except for the windows which are a little basic, texture and building design is first rate and all with excellent clutter and traffic animations, great addition features with winter textures and full Montreal orthophoto textures... Overall excellent value.

Negatives: Heavy pressure on your processors but better than the other GlobalArt sceneries, not a big fan of average w2xp autogen, bland and boring textures and too bright to fit in, but required to work with the ortho textures, window lighting is average, no grass and runways and taxiways are over reflective in most lighting conditions

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Yes!... CYUL Montreal by GlobalArt is Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here :

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Wow, excellent review, thank you for caring about our work.
We will improve the project as we release the updates.
All your suggestions are welcome and we will work on this in the future.

On the performance we had very positive results, we did tests on different equipments and we got an excellent rate with the FPS, between 30/45, with shadow activated and high configuration set in the X-Plane.